Among many other arts and excellences which you enjoy, I am glad to find this favorite of mine the most predominant. I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden; and yet no man who makes his happiness more public, by a free communication of the art and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to recommend to mankind the search of that felicity, which you instruct them how to find out and to enjoy.

Happy art thou, whom God does bless
With the full choice of thine own happiness;
And happier yet, because thou'rt blest
With prudence how to choose the best.
In books and gardens, thou hast plac'd aright
(Things which thou well dost understand,
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
Thy noble innocent delight:

And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet
Both pleasures more refin'd and sweet,

The fairest garden in her looks,

And in her mind the wisest books.

Oh, who would change these soft, yet solid joys,
For empty shows, and senseless noise ;

And all which rank ambition breeds,

Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such poisonous weeds?

When Epicurus to the world had taught

That pleasure was the chiefest good,

(And was perhaps i' th' right, if rightly understood), His life he to his doctrine brought,

And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure sought:

Whoever a true epicure would be,

May there find cheap and virtuous luxury
Vitellius' table, which did hold

As many creatures as the ark of old,
That fiscal table to which every day
All countries did a constant tribute pay,
Could nothing more delicious afford,
Than nature's liberality

Help'd with a little art and industry
Allows the meanest gard'ner's board.

The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose,
For which the grape or melon she would lose.
Though all th' inhabitants of sea and air
Be listed in the glutton's bill of fare,

Yet still the fruits of earth we see Plac'd the third story high in all her luxury.

Where does the wisdom and the power divine
In a more bright and sweet reflection shine,-
Where do we finer strokes and colors see
Of the Creator's real poetry,

Than when we with attention look

Upon the third day's volume of the book?
If we could open and intend our eye,
We all, like Moses, should espy,

Ev'n in a bush, the radiant Deity.
But we despise these his inferior ways

(Though no less full of miracle and praise):

Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze ;

The stars of earth no wonder in us raise,

Though these perhaps do, more than they,
The life of mankind sway.

Although no part of mighty nature be

More stor'd with beauty, power and mystery,
Yet, to encourage human industry,

God has so order'd, that no other part
Such space and such dominion leaves for art.

We nowhere art do so triumphant see,

As when it grafts or buds the tree :
In other things we count it to excel,
If it a docile scholar can appear
To nature, and but imitate her well;

It over-rules and is her master here.

It imitates her Maker's power divine,

And changes her sometimes and sometimes does refine :

It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore,

To its blest state of Paradise before.

Who would not joy to see his conquering hand

O'er all the vegetable world command ?

And the wild giants of the wood receive

What law he's pleas'd to give?

He bids th' ill-natur'd crab produce
The gentler apple's winy juice,
The golden fruit that worthy is
Of Galatea's purple kiss:

He does the savage hawthorn teach
To bear the medlar and the pear ;
He bids the rustic plum to rear
A noble trunk, and be a peach.
Even Daphne's coyness he doth mock,
And weds the cherry to her stock.

Though she refus'd Apollo's suit,

Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,
Now wonders at herself to see

That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit.

Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade,
Which by his own imperial hands was made;
I see him smile (methinks) as he does talk
With th' ambassadors who come in vain

T'entice him to a throne again.

If I, my friends (said he), should to you show
All the delights which in these gardens grow,
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,
Than 'tis that you should carry me away.
And trust me not, my friends, if every day
I walk not here with more delight

Than ever, after the most happy fight,
In triumph to the capitol I rode,

To thank the gods, and to be thought, myself, almost a god.

A noble finish that, to a sometimes prosaical, often poetical, and always engaging and thoughtful effusion.

The garden possessed by Cowley's friend Evelyn was at his seat of Sayes Court, Deptford. It contained, among other beauties, an enormous hedge of holly, which made a glorious show in winter time with its shining red berries. The Czar Peter, who came to England in Evelyn's time, and occupied his house, took delight (by way of procuring himself a strong Russian sensation), in being drawn through this hedge "in a wheel-barrow !" He left it in sad condition accordingly, to the disgust and lamentation of the owner. The garden cuts rather a formal and solemn figure, to modern eyes, in the engravings that remain of it. But such engravings can suggest little of color and movement of flowers and the breathing trees; and our ancestors had more reason to admire those old orderly creations of theirs than modern improvement allows. We are too apt to suppose that one thing cannot be good, because another is better; or that an improvement cannot too often reject what it might include or ameliorate. There was no want of enthusiasm in the admirers of the old style, whether they were right or wrong. Hear what an arbiter of taste in the next age said of it, the famous Sir William Temple. He was an honest

statesman and mild Epicurean philosopher, in the real sense of that designation; that is to say, temperate and reflecting, and fonder of a garden and the friends about him than of anything else. He was a great cultivator of fruit. He had the rare pleasure of obtaining the retirement he loved; first at Sheen, near Richmond, in Surrey, which is the place alluded to in the following "Thoughts on Retirement;" and, secondly, at Moor Park, near Farnham, in the same county-a residence probably named after the Moor Park which he eulogizes in the subsequent description of a garden. In the garden of his house at Farnham he directed that his heart should be buried; and it was. The sun-dial, under which he desired it might be deposited, is still remaining.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S THOUGHTS ON

RETIREMENT.

FROM ONE OF HIS LETTERS.

AS the country life, and this part of it more particularly

(gardening), were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say, that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavored to escape from them into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths or circles of life.

"Inter cuncta leges et per cunctabere doctos
Qua ratione queas traducere leniter ævum,
Quid minuat curæ, quid te tibi reddet amicum;
Quid pure tranquillet, honos, an dulce lucellum,
An secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitæ."

But above all the learned read, and ask

By what means you may gently pass your age,

What lessens care, what makes thee thine own friend,
What truly calms the mind; honor, or wealth,

Or else a private path of stealing life.